INDIAN EXPRESS

Engaging with US to ensure deportees are not ill-treated: Jaishankar in House

With some of the 104 illegal Indian immigrants who were deported from the United States on Wednesday complaining of mistreatment, and the United States Border Patrol releasing a video clip showing the deportees walking with handcuffs and leg shackles, the government came under Opposition fire. In a suo motu statement in both Houses of Parliament, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar underlined that the "use of restraints" was as per the US's standard operating procedure (SOP), and Delhi was engaging with Washington DC to ensure that deportees were not ill-treated. He also pointed out that the "process of deportation was not new".

Told it can't drill in a national park, OIL turns it into a research project

Denied permission to explore and extract oil and gas under Assam's Dibru Saikhowa National Park, where mining is prohibited, Oil India Limited (OIL) has impressed upon the Environment Ministry the need for carrying out an "R&D study" (research and development) in the same oil well for which the extraction proposal was rejected. The Environment Ministry's Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) recommended the R&D proposal subject to the condition that it will be used purely for research purposes," confirmed an OIL spokesperson from Duliajan in Assam. According to OIL, the ERD (extended reach drilling) technology can drill at a depth of 3,500-4,000 metres without disturbing the surface.

Rajnath, Hegseth agree to work on 10-yr framework to bolster defence ties

Defence Minister and his American counter-part, Pete Hegseth, agreed Thursday to work on a 10-year comprehensive framework to bolster the India-US defence partnership, especially in the spheres of intelligence, logistics, operational and industrial engagement. An Indian readout of the conversation said India and the US have agreed to work together to draft a comprehensive framework on defence cooperation, aimed at structuring the bilateral collaboration for the 2025-2035 period.

Nuclear energy will grow with pvt sector entry just like space did: Jitendra Singh

Describing the 100 GW target for nuclear power for 2047 as "challenging but realistic", Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh Thursday said that the entry of private sector players would have the same kind of effect on the growth of nuclear energy as it has had on India's space economy. In the Budget speech, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had proposed to open up the much-guarded nuclear sector to boost private investments. She had proposed that the government would amend the Atomic Energy Act of 1962 and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act to facilitate the entry of private companies in nuclear power generation. Traditionally, nuclear power plants in India have been owned and operated only by state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) and its fully-owned subsidiary Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam (BHAVINI).

Demchok now open to visitors under battlefield tourism initiative

Demchok, which was among the two main points of the recent border row with China, has now been opened for visitors as part of the Centre's new initiative of Battlefield Tourism. Run jointly by the Ministry of Defence, along with state governments and the Ministry of Tourism, the list of 77 forward sites includes 21 from Arunachal Pradesh, 14 in Ladakh, 11 in Jammu and Kashmir, and seven in Sikkim. After four years of standoff, India recently announced the completion of the process of disengagement at the friction points of Demchok and Depsang Plains along the Line of Actual Control in Eastern Ladakh, adding, Indian troops have resumed patrolling in the Demchok area, where Chinese troops had been squatting at the Charding Nullah. The sites in Arunachal are Tawang, Bum La, Gorsam, Lohit, Kameng Region and Walong, while in Ladakh, besides Demchok, there is also Galwan, the site of violent clashes between the Indian and Chinese soldiers in 2020, and Pangong Tso, which has witnessed several military standoffs with China since 1962.

The other pravasi

In their address on Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, the day that commemorates Mahatma Gandhi's return to India from South Africa in 1915, successive Prime Ministers have said to the gathered audience of people of Indian origin (PIOs) overseas and non-resident Indians (NRIs) that they are Mother India's ambassadors. They represent Indian culture and civilisation, talent and enterprise. The status of today's illegal migrants is, in many respects, no different from that of the indentured labour of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The latter's great grandchildren may now be feted in India as overseas representatives of Bharat 'mata', but there are many children of Bharat 'mata' today who emigrate illegally for reasons not very different from the ones that forced the poor of British India to be corralled into slavery.

SEA OF OPPORTUNITIES

In its recognition of the fact that excellence cannot be confined to the classroom alone, the Sports Excellence Admission (SEA) scheme by IIT-Madras marks a trans-formative step. Launched in July-August 2024, with an investment of around Rs 25 crore and operational only in the Madras campus, 34 supernumerary seats are reserved for athletes who have won at least one medal in a national or international event in a sport recognised by federations under the Union sport ministry in the last four years, scored at least 75 per cent in their Class XII board exams and cleared the JEE (Advanced) test. It rewards athletic prowess with infrastructural support, as well as the opportunity to pursue higher education at one of the country's most coveted institutions.

SECURITY AT ITS CORE

A Payments Architecture that is ubiquitous, costless to the user, reliable and used by millions, UPl is one of India's defining contributions to the 21st century. It has allowed India to bypass the dominance of card networks and moved digital payments ahead by decades. The imposition of arbitrary market-share cap to mimic a competitive outcome is counterproductive. These markets tend to become concentrated due to positive network externalities. There are other issues around UPI that need to be addressed -the biggest is personal data protection. Privacy experts argue that the UPI ecosystem is able to sustain without fees simply by virtue of being premised on data-collection and data-sharing. This means that if you are not paying, you are the product. While data collection in UPI is not as Orwellian as the behavioural data collection and monetisation by social-media firms, there are parallels. And perhaps, lessons to be learned.

Tax cut will have multiplier effects

The multiplier hinges on two ideas: (i) The marginal propensity to save (MPS), which is the fraction of each additional rupee that people save; and (ii) the marginal propensity to consume (MPC), which equals the fraction they spend and tautologically equals (1 -MPS). The consumption multiplier equals 1/(1-MPC) and so 1/MPS. To estimate MPS, we note that the debt taken by households, which is included in the net savings rate but not in the gross savings rate, may be used primarily for asset creation. The gross national savings rate, which is averaged across all Indian households, approximates to 30 per cent for the last decade. This implies a MPC of 0.7 across all households. However, India's middle class has a higher MPC than wealthy households.

10.

Labour Min formulating transaction-based pension policy for gig workers

In an attempt to address the employability issues of gig workers who shuttle between multiple platforms, the Ministry of Labour and Employment is working on a transaction-based pension policy to offer social security benefits to nearly 1 crore platform workers in the country, a source said. The division of the pension share between the gig worker and the employer will be specified in the same way as the Centre's and states' shares under Goods and Services Tax transactions. The benefits are linked with the e-Shram portal which was launched in August 2021 to register and support workers in unorganised sectors by providing them with a Universal Account Number (UAN) and creating a comprehensive National Database of Unorganised Workers (NDUW).

11.

Govt to develop 1,600 centres to train 'good drivers', reduce accidents

Noting that a significant number of road accidents occur due to the fault of drivers, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MORTH) have issued a new policy to set up driving training institutes across the country. Under the scheme, the ministry will provide an assistance of Rs 4,500 crore in a phased manner to set up 1,600 such institutes in all 36 states and Union territories (UTs). The new policy provides higher incentives to the developer and changes the population criteria with allocation of higher number of such centres. Currently, there are a total of 28 functional driving training institutes, which have been set up under the MoRTH scheme. Under the scheme, three different types of institutes such as Institute of Driving Training & Research (ITDRs), Regional Driving Training Centres (RDTCs) and Driving Training Centres (DTCs) will be developed. Out of the total allocation of 1,600 institutes, 26 ITDRS, 134 RDTCs and 1,427 DTCs will be set up.

12.

US decision on G20: message for ICJ, diplomacy test for India

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that he would not attend the G20 foreign ministers' meet in Johannesburg because South Africa is "doing very bad things". President Donald Trump has declared that "South Africa is confiscating land", and treating "certain classes of people VERY BADLY". South Africa and Malaysia announced a campaign to protect the rulings of the ICJ and International Criminal Court (ICC) in the face of alleged "attempts by US Congress to hit the ICC through the use of sanctions". A nine-nation "Hague Group" was formed under South Africa's leadership to defend the rights of Palestinians and to coordinate against violations of international law by Israel. The first Trump administration (2017-21) imposed sweeping sanctions on the ICC and its officials - a decision that was reversed by the Joe Biden administration, which supported the ICC investigation into Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

13.

HOW THE CLIMATE CRISIS IS INTENSIFYING MARINE HEATWAVES

The marine heatwaves (MHWs) linked to the death of more than 30,000 fish off the coastal Western Australia in January were made up to 100 times more probable due to climate change, a new analysis said. The MHWs began in September 2024 and are still ongoing in the region. A marine heatwave occurs when the surface temperature of a particular region of the sea rises to 3 or 4 degrees Celsius above the average temperature for at least five days. MHWs can last for weeks, months or even years, according to the US government agency National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). A 2021 report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said MHWs had increased by 50% over the past decade, last longer and were more severe now. The primary reason is the climate crisis. As global temperatures have soared to 1.3 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial levels, 90% of the extra heat has been absorbed by the ocean.

14.

India's repositioning on climate

In the last year or so, India has signalled a subtle but important shift in the way it views the climate crisis and how it wants to deal with it. India has also emphasised that rapid economic growth is the best defence against climate change for developing countries. The shift in India's emphasis seems to be prompted by a reassessment of ground realities. The world is nowhere close to meeting its emissions reduction targets for 2030 or 2035 due to inaction largely on the part of the developed countries. In fact, global emissions are still on the rise. The Economic Survey for 2024-25, released last week, asserted that India must first strive to attain developed country parameters by 2047 using available resources, and only then focus on achieving the net zero goal by 2070.

Notifications

All Exams